I recently signed a petition to introduce a plastic bottle return scheme in the U.K.

Throw-away plastic is polluting our environment with ever increasing landfills. However, our oceans take the biggest hit. In the Pacific Ocean is a plastic island the size of France and it is rapidly growing. There was even a petition to recognize this ‘plastic island’ as an independent country in order to get environmental protection. Of course this won’t happen, but it is a nice idea.

I was therefore surprised to see the ‘plastic bottle’ topic coming up on Sky News on 30 November. It proves that pressure groups and petitions do get results. We use 1.4 BILLION plastic bottles every single day.

The BBC ran a short video clip about a huge plastic island in the Caribbean entitled ‘The most disgusting thing I have seen in the water’. It’s amazing to see the extend of the pollution. Here is the full article.

https://youtu.be/57jv8vBIUHI

The United Nations film, ‘Plastic Ocean’ features the Marine Scientist Dr Jennifer Lavers, who devoted her life to studying the life of sea birds, finds an incredible amount of plastic pieces in their bodies.

Plastic is everywhere. It is very durable and this is the actual problem. As fish eat plastic pieces those microscopic plastics make their way into the food chain and into our bodies. Eating fish is probably one of the most polluted foods on the planet.

The Telegraph runs a story about a 10 percent rise in plastic pollution on Britain’s beaches and David Attenborough urges action on plastics after filming Blue Planet II. The problem is overwhelming. The most shocking amongst all those reports is Captain Paul Watson’s TED talk about ocean pollution entitled ‘If our oceans die, we die’. The talk is full of mind boggling figures about the state of our oceans.

It becomes abundantly clear if we want to reverse or even slow down the environmental destruction of our planet we need to make personal changes, changes to our life style and changes to our habits. It needs an entirely new consciousness, a new level of consciousness to understand that by our present level of consumption we will destroy our home, this beautiful planet earth, in an irreversible manner.

After all, the present level of consumption we are so much used to does ultimately not make us happy how ever hard we are trying. The satisfaction which is promised does not live up to our expectation and as soon as one desire is fulfilled another desire raises its head. We are chasing after happiness and fulfillment without ever reaching it. Humanity needs a new paradigm. The next step of evolution of consciousness is much overdue.

If we want to be at all credible in our environmental science and research we need to ‘Walk theTalk‘. Instead of flying from conference to conference we should think twice before we get on this plane, an interesting article in the Guardian. Change starts with ourself and our habits and lifestyle. There is no way around this.